Life In A Rut

During the summer, as the antlers of elk and other deer grow, they're covered with a soft velvet. As autumn approaches they remove the velvet by rubbing up against trees. This is in preparation for the up and coming mating season or rut.

Before long, the bull elk (or more properly, stags) will not be feeding contentedly beside one another. Au contraire, they will be moving off on their own to try to attract a harem of females or hinds. Soon you'll hear the males bugling and they'll appear more often along the margins of field and forest--particularly along highways and near golf courses. More than one golfer has been chased by an overzealous stag. This is also not the time to move in close for photographs. Since their eyes are very poor, anything that gets in front of a stag at this time of year is one of two things...it's either a challenge for their harem, or a fine looking cow...and trust me, you don't want to be either of those things!

During the rut, the stags try to attract and mate with as many hinds as possible. The only problem with this strategy is that all the other stags are trying to do exactly the same thing. Needles to say, this leads to some conflict.

The bugling accomplishes two purposes. It alerts the females to the presence of a large stag, and broadcasts a challenge to all other stags in the area. As these stags compete for the harem, a battle may ensue. The two participants lower their heads, touch their antlers together and go through a period of pushing and shoving until one of the two retreat. The victor wins the right to mate with the hinds. If this all sounds like a lot of trouble to go through just to find a few mates--it is! It's nature's way of ensuring that the stronger males do the mating. This strengthens the population by passing the genes of the victorious stag on to the next generation.

Like many game plans this one is not perfect. Often, as two large stags are engaged in a stand off, one of the smaller males will move in and mate with some of the hinds.

This strategy of males attracting harems has been adopted by many species of animals, including several of the large hooved animals in the Bow Valley. The battles of bighorn sheep can be heard for several miles as the sound of their horns crashing together echoes like a gunshot.